1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to neuropsychiatric disease and, more specifically, to a method for developing a test for neuropsychiatric disease.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Autism is a neuropsychiatric disease and brain development disorder that affects a large number of people. Autism is characterized by impaired social interaction, problems with verbal and nonverbal communication, and unusual, repetitive or severely limited activities and interests. It is estimated that three to six children out of every 1,000 will have autism. Males are four times as likely to have autism as females.
Previous research pertaining to structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been performed to identify volumetric differences and elucidate the neuro-developmental underpinnings and brain behavior relationship in autism. Based on this and other research, it is believed that there may be a strong connection between autism and abnormal brain activity.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a recently developed form of neuroimaging that may be used to aid in the understanding of activity above and beyond what is possible by ordinary structural MRI. Functional Magnetic resonance imaging measures the hemo-dynamic response related to neural activity in the brain or spinal cord of humans or animal subjects. Using fMRI, brain diseases may be diagnosed and analyzed by detecting the brain activation pattern changes between patients with known cases of the disease in question and a control group of patients that are known to be free of the disease in question.
This may be accomplished, for example, by monitoring the hemo-dynamic response of the subject while exposed to a particular stimulus that is known or believed to illicit distinct responses in subjects that have a particular disease and subjects that do not have the particular disease.
However, while fMRI has been successfully applied to the diagnosis and analysis of some neuropsychiatric disease, other neuropsychiatric diseases, such as autism, have proven very difficult to characterize based on measured hemo-dynamic response levels. This is in part due to a vague and/or noisy activation signals that are generally observed during fMRI analysis.
For this and other reasons, progress in developing tests for neuropsychiatric diseases using functional neuroimaging such as fMRIs has proven especially difficult. Without adequate methods for developing tests for neuropsychiatric diseases, research pertaining to diseases such as autism may progress more slowly than is desired. Accordingly, advances in the development of tests for neuropsychiatric diseases may facilitate research, increase understanding and help to bring about a treatment or cure to neuropsychiatric diseases such as autism.